Mount Athos Research Articles

Modern Odysseys: Cavafy, Woolf, Césaire, and a Poetics of Indirection by Michelle Zerba

Reviewed by: Modern Odysseys: Cavafy, Woolf, Césaire, and a Poetics of Indirection by Michelle Zerba Vassiliki Kolocotroni (bio) Michelle Zerba, Modern Odysseys: Cavafy, Woolf, Césaire, and a Poetics of Indirection. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2021. Pp. x + 241. Cloth $99.95. In “Homer’s Sticks and Stones” (1969), a classic—some might say positively antique—essay on James Joyce, modernist scholar Hugh Kenner declared Ulysses a veritable “museum of Homers” (61). The phrase points as much to Joyce’s encyclopedic approach to his novel’s Urtext and its variants as to his syncretic repurposing of the all-too-human Homeric material made of “cups and saucers, chairs and tables, sticks and stones” (62). At its best, Michelle Zerba’s imaginatively conceived study returns to the materiality of the Homeric text, its language, and its world via productive detours which yield invariably suggestive insights and resonances. Zerba’s method, more associative than comparative as such, circumnavigates reception too, foregoing accounts of an Alexandrian, Edwardian, or Antillean Homer, or indeed of a modernist Homer tout court, tracing instead metaphorical patterns woven out of “a looser set of odyssean tropes,” namely “diffusion and mixture; islands and isolation; passage and detour; and return and split endings” (17). In turn, these tropes, individually and cumulatively, are proposed as critical coordinates for locating [End Page 154] in the works of C. P. Cavafy, Virginia Woolf, and Aimé Césaire a shared “poetics of indirection,” expressed variously through “backdoor strategies, invention by circumlocution, masquerades, devious forms of linguistic play, tricks with publishing, and sometimes outright coding to avoid the censor” (20). Zerba reads a selection of Cavafy’s poetry, Woolf’s Orlando, and Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal to underscore those “odyssean tonalities” (37) that bear out the study’s core premise of “an odyssean-inflected imagination at work” (18) traceable through “weak links and oblique relations” (52), “displacement[s] of errant sexuality” onto figures of the Other (72), “katabatic journeys” of “sexual and racial transformation” (114), “mutating identities” (159), and incomplete “return[s] and split endings” (161). Sustained across four chapters, each corresponding to a discrete trope and framed by a prefatory close reading of a Homeric scene, term, or object, this plotting of affinities, echoes, and mirrorings—but also of idiosyncratic, local strategies and concerns—is a tour de force. Leaving aside the odd misconception—such as the description of Woolf as “still at the edges of the canon” (4)—and the rather rudimentary references to Joyce, Eliot, and H. D. (11), there are conceptual and interpretative riches here, and an admirably controlled movement from immersive glosses of Homeric material to large-scale but still poignant and plausible extrapolating gestures. The pairing of “the wound and the word, passage and detour” (126), set against the backdrop of a traumatized errancy or “fugue state” (116) and the vicissitudes of memory and recognition, underpins a magisterial reading of Aimé and Suzanne Césaire’s impossible, negative nostos to a colonial culture. Similarly immersive, the reading of Woolf’s Orlando follows its odyssean “dynamic of concealing and revealing” (136) through scenes of transformation, transgression, or “trans-ing as a multidirectional process at work on several levels” (146). Here, the odyssean trope of passage seems readily deployable, indeed so much so that its metaphorical momentum in Zerba’s reading almost takes over, at times detracting from the highly coded, witty, or ludic tone of Woolf’s phantasmagoric novel. For example, newly-transformed Orlando’s nostalgic vision of England on Mount Athos is aptly noticed in chapter 3, but is also under-read. The errant new woman is surely a transgressive presence as an interloper on the Athonian soil (a prohibition of which Woolf was well aware, having published in 1925 Jane Ellen Harrison’s pointed account of it in her Reminiscences of a Student’s Life), while the fantastic English scene appearing to her as if in a mirage is also presciently political given its coded palette—the green (grassy lawns), violet (shadows replacing the yellow sunlight), and white (falling snow) of the suffragette tricolor. [End Page 155] In turn, the account of Cavafy’s odyssean poetics, though cogent and...

В поисках утраченной традиции: к истории церковной живописи 1840-х - первой половины 1850-х гг.

The last decade of the reign of Nicholas I (1845 - 1855) was the time when the projects of renewal of church paintings in Russia appeared. Public discussion of the problems of the tradition of the Russian art started with the publication in 1845 of a brochure "On Icon-paintings" by the Ostrog bishop Anatoly, who wasn't, however, a zealous adherent to the traditional icon-paintings, his "theory" of icon-paintings tending towards neoclassicism. In difference from the Right Reverend Anatoly's approach in his brochure, the Rev'd Grigoriy Debolsky argued for the inseparable connection between the national spirit (narodnost') of the church paintings and the tradition of icon-painting in an article published in the same year. Russian Academic school did not respond to the new attitudes in society: propelled by the Emperor, this school acknowledged the tradition in symbolic terms only - in the Byzantinine golden impressions in the paintings in St Isaac's Cathedral. On the whole, the ensemble of these paintings promised to become a brilliant legacy of Bologna academism. 1848, the year of a wave of revolutions in Europe that were perceived as a direct threat to the Empire, opened a period of Nicholas's reign marked, on the other hand, by the intensification of censorship, and, on the other hand, by the two projects of renewal of national church art: those by Duke G.G. Gagarin and by I.P. Sakharov, an archaeologist. The first project, which had at its base the idea, taken from French artists, of christianising ancient art, was an attempt to adapt the Byzantine tradition to the framework of the academic artistic paradigm. Sakharov's project, on the contrary, presupposed complete rejection of this academic paradigm and going back to the icon-paintings that were not yet "spoiled" by Western influences. On the eve of the Crimean war the government made an attempt to expand the national tradition by including in it the ancient paintings from the Mount Athos, in particular, the wall-paintings by Panselinos, which, as A.N. Mouravyov claimed, "are on a par with the works by Rafael and Michelangelo in colouration and modest comportment of the figures". In the new era, marked by the Great Reform of Alexander II, the attempts at a renewal of church paintings that flourished in Nicholas's times, become, for the most part, a thing of the past.

I monaci athoniti e l’Islam nel sec. XIV: le fonti agiografiche

"The article aims to approach the theme of the progress of the Turkish brigades into the Byzantine territories, in particular the Mount Athos, during the fourteenth century. It provides a new perspective for this topic. Indeed, it focuses on the hagiographical sources and how they describe the reaction of the Athonite monks in front of this phenomenon. The sources have been set according to a thematic order: 1) cases of escape from the Holy Mountain after the Turkish raids; 2) reports of or from captivity; 3) the consequences of the Turkish progress into the Asiatic and Western provinces of the Byzantine Empire; 4) the psychological impact on the monastic communities of Athos, and finally 5) the relationship between Athonite monks and Islamic communities in the Holy Land as favorite pilgrimage destination. The perception of the violence of the Turkish troops forces the Athonite communities to a general reconsideration of lifestyle and of ascetical practices. Moreover, it indirectly causes the propagation of the hesychast lifestyle out of the borders of the Holy Mountain during the late Byzantine period. Out of fear for the Islamic enemies the hagiographers take the opportunity to praise the ethical qualities of their monastic champions. On the other hand, in these sources they do not deal with Islamic morals; the violence of the enemies is the unique theme they consider as a priori distinguished feature of Muhammed’s followers. Keywords: Mount Athos, Byzantine monasticism, hesychasm, fourteenth century, Byzantine hagiography, Turkish conquest, Christian–Muslim relations, Kallistos I, Gregory Palamas, Philotheos Kokkinos "

The Literary Legacy of Kallistos Angelikoudes: an Attempt at Systematization

"This article explores the little studied and partially unpublished literary corpus of Kallistos Angelikoudes, one of the most fascinating late Byzantine hesychast authors. It addresses some of the problems associated with the manuscript tradition of his writings and offers a new approach to the systematization of his oeuvre. Despite the uncertainty regarding the identification of the two groups of texts that make up the “books” of Angelikoudes’ literary corpus, that is, the Hesychastic Education and the Hesychastic Consolation, this article advances an argument with regard to the possible composition of these works. Keywords: Kallistos Angelikoudes, Discourses, Chapters, Byzantine hesychasm, Mount Athos, Philokalia, manuscript tradition, genres of Byzantine theological literature, ascetic miscellanea "

The Testament of the Nun Maria (Kale)

Abstract The testament of Kale (in religion Maria), written in the year 1098 and transmitted by copy in the archive of Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos, constitutes one of the most remarkable documents of the Moyen Âge grec. While its contents have hitherto been analyzed through the lens of economic and rural history, her will contains exhaustive commemorative prescriptions which shed light on how Byzantine founders sought to preserve their memory. The present contribution examines this testament, along with related documents, as a remarkable expression of Maria’s concern for the salvation of her soul, and that of her spouse, which she sought to realize through memorial services, charitable distributions and commemorative feasting. The testament makes clear that Maria pursued various commemorative strategies to perpetuate her own memory and that of her deceased husband: to this end, she incentivized several groups of people with bequests to pray for her after her death. A complete translation of the testament into English is offered along with an annotated commentary in an appendix.

SFÂNTUL VASILE DE LA POIANA MĂRULUI ASPECTE DIN ÎNVĂȚĂTURA SA DESPRE RUGĂCIUNEA MINȚII SAU A INIMII PENTRU CREDINCIOSUL CONTEMPORAN

The teachings of Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului (1692-1767) represent a unique synthesis, of that time, on the benefit of practicing the Jesus prayer, also known as the prayer of the mind, of the heart, of the one thought or of all the available time. In this synthesis, Saint Basil, on the basis of his own living of the Jesus prayer, highlights the sanctifying work of this prayer for all believer, be they a monastic or a lay person, this teaching being valid all the way throughout the centuries to this day. He recalls the so-called ‘psycho-somatic methods’ and ‘techniques’ and shows his preference for the hesychastic tradition of Mount Sinai, expressing reserve regarding the hesychastic tradition of Mount Athos, the latter tradition being focused on the respective methods. Saint Basil distinguishes between two stages in the practice of the Jesus prayer: 1) ‘the practical stage’, of which each Christian is responsible, which corresponds to the ‘active’ or ‘working Jesus prayer’; 2) ‘the contemplative stage’, reserved to the perfect ones, which is a gift from God and corresponds to the ‘contemplative’ or ‘seeing Jesus prayer’. But of this contemplative prayer are made worthy also those who cultivate the first stage of the Jesus prayer, sometimes before the moment of their passage into the life beyond the grave, and sometimes after this moment as a reward and mercy from God. Actually, the teachings of Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului concern mainly the first stage of the spiritual perfection, namely the fight against the sinful passions and the cleansing from them, because most believers are at this stage.

HESYCHASTIC TRADITION AS A SOURCE OF UKRAINIAN CORDOCENTRISM

The statement of basic materials. The history of the adoption of Christianity by Kyivan Rus from the very beginning shows close ties with the monastic republic on Mount Athos. Researchers testify that Mount Athos was already the center of enlightenment and culture of Kyivan Rus. Only in this way does it become clear that Antony Pecherskyi was not a historical accident that suddenly fell from the sky like a star. Not only in Kyiv, but also in other cultural and political centers, monasteries appear in the context of the Athos heritage. XV century became catastrophic for the Byzantine Empire. But Athos retained relative autonomy. In the 16th century it is Volyn that becomes the spiritual and educational center of connection between the Ukrainian land and Mount Athos. The decline of Byzantium also affected the history of Ukrainian lands. The gradual strengthening of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth led to the beginning of projects to absorb Orthodox culture. The Union of Brest in 1596 provoked a movement of Orthodox spiritual and cultural resistance. And Athos, with the tradition of the Hesychasts, fulfilled his spiritual mission. The Athos influence on the literary works of Ukrainian figures was direct. S. Shumylo claims that Elder Ioann Vyshenskyi was the brightest personality of the Orthodox movement in Ukraine in the 17th century. His spiritual and literary work is a century ahead of the forerunners of the “philokalic revival” in Orthodoxy of the 18th-19th centuries. The works of I. Vyshenskyi are deeply imbued with ascetic and hesychastic motifs. But he was not only an experienced practitioner of the incessant Jesus prayer, but also tried to instill the hesychastic tradition in his homeland. It was from this that he wanted to build a spiritual and educational system in Orthodox monasteries according to Athos customs. The Ukrainian hesychastic revival had not only a religious and cultural-political influence. He was a statesman. The direct influence on the formation of Ukrainian statehood is confirmed by the blessing and, in fact, the legitimization of the “holy war” for the defense of Orthodoxy by the well-known Aphonite Patriarch of Constantinople Athanasius, who twice met with Bohdan Khmelnitsky and who ended his life in the Cossack Mgar monastery. The participation of Aphonites not only in the spiritual, but also in the political life of Ukraine was systematic and widespread. The 17th - 18th centuries also had a significant influence of the hesychastic tradition on all levels of Ukrainian society, from the spiritual and political elite to the masses. This is what can explain the phenomenon of H. Skovoroda.

O nacionalnom radu Svetog Save

There is no doubt that, when it comes to the spiritual rooting of Serbs, and therefore the estabilishment of a national identity, the key place belongs to Saint Sava. He is the main constant, the spiritual vertical, the central figure in the histiry of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Serbian people. Of all church dignitaries and saints, the cult of Saint Sava always occupied a central place. He is the creator of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the first Serbian archbishop. His role in the creation of the Serbian church, state and nation made him a fundamental figure in Serbian nationa history. Sain Sava began his historic mission by going to Mount Athos. He knew how important it was that his father Stefan Nemanja, the creatoir of the Serbian state from which the Serbs count their historical time, would join him there. And so it was, Nemanja stepped down from power, became a monk and followed in his son's aootsteps to Mount Athos. Together they built the Serbian monastery on Mount Athos - Hilandar, which would become a source of Serbian literacy, education and culture. Sava compiled a biography of his father, a work that is considered the beginning of Serbian literature. And with which the creation of Nemanja's cult, but also the cult of his family - the holy lineage of Nemanjić. Even before Nemanja, Serbs represented a political factor, sreated state unions that had their own cultural basis, legendary and historical traditions, but the real historical life of the Serbian people began with Stefan Nemanja. Sain Sava knew how important the close relationship between the church ant the state is for the future of the Serbian people, he was convinced that the mission of the church requires the support of the state and that the state, if it wants to be strong and stable, needs the support of the church. But it is also tempting to determinate the scope of work for each of them, because he also knew how dangerous it is if they start falling into each other's jurisdiction. The strenght and solidity of Sava's church was showen even after the collapse of the Serbian state, when it lived in foreign countries, because it became the property of the Serbian people with whom it shared its destiny - the church was the people, the people were the curch. These are the reasons for which it can rightly be said that, in addition to being the founder of the Serbian Church, which is the orginator of Serbian culture. Sain Sava is also the founder of the Serbian nation.

Race against Time: Safekeeping and Restoration of Books in the Byzantine Libraries of the Monasteries of Mount Athos

The paper deals with the problem of organisation of the libraries of the monasteries of Mount Athos in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine eras. The available data allow us to identify the locations of the monasteries of Mount Athos where books were kept and trace their movements between them. Unique information on the movements of codices between monasteries is also analysed. Certain rhythms of time for the storage, cataloguing, reading and restoration of books and documents are explored. The main cultural and archival function of the Greek libraries of Mount Athos — the accumulation and preservation of books and documents — is shown through specific examples. Athonite librarians were actively engaged in the “production of eternity”, i.e., either preventing the physical aging of books or transferring texts from old media to new ones. It was book culture and the tradition of material support for intellectual pursuits (the creation, preservation and restoration of books), including on Mount Athos, that played a crucial role in the preservation and transmission of the Byzantine book heritage after the destruction of the Byzantine Roman Empire.

Traces of epistolary contacts between Serbian monastic milieus and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in two letter writing manuals from Mount Athos (16th–17th centuries)

Traces of epistolary contacts between Serbian monastic milieus and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in two letter writing manuals from Mount Athos (16th–17th centuries)

Towards an interpretation of the word “khorik'” in the colophon of the Dobrian Menaion

This paper focuses on the colophon written by the bulgarian copist-kalligrapher Dobrian at the end of the Menaion manuscript ОГНБ, 1/4 (17). This manuscript was found by V. I. Grigorovich at the Zograf monastery on Mount Athos, already incomplete, the beginning and some sheets were already missing from the manuscript. Currently, the manuscript is divided into two parts. The colophon in located on page 92, in the part of the manuscript currently stored in Odessa and contains the formulaic celebration of the work being finished, the name of the person who ordered the book and the name of the scribe, Dobrian, who calls himself a “khorik’”. All these elements are rare for the Southern Slavic tradition in the XIII–XIV centuries. The word “khorik’”, which was not included in the Miclosic dictionary, was examined in a brief article by P. A. Lavrov. According to him, the word comes from the Greek χωρικός (rural, rustic), from which a noun with a Slavic suffix -in-, khoryanin, used in some Vlach-Bulgarian documents, also originated. Based on the usage of such formulas in the colophons of Greek manuscripts both old and new the author attempts to determine the precise meaning of the word “khorik’”, given the purposes of the colophon in both Greek and (Southern)Slavic traditions.

The oldest vita of St. Paul of Xeropotamou

Saint Paul of Xeropotamou is regarded as one of the most important ascetic figures of Mount Athos in the 10th century. Until now, it was considered that the oldest version of his vita was the one included in the Neon Eklogion of Nikodemos the Hagiorite, which was published in 1803. It was, however, overlooked that in 1967 the Soviet scholar Sigurd Schmidt published an article on four texts concerning Mount Athos from a Russian Slavonic codex of 1557/8, which was copied at the monastery of the Archangel Michael Skovorodskiy in Novgorod, with the fourth text being a brief account of the life of Paul of Xeropotamou. This proves the existence of a vita considerably older than that of the 18th-century version. In this paper, I compare the two versions, suggesting that the original form of the vita, as it is found in the Novgorod manuscript, may have been formed during the early 15th century and written in the milieu of two Protoi of Mount Athos, Serapheim and Gabriel, after 1500 in Karyes.

Chilandar monastery in the Athonias by Iakobos Neasketiotes

The article deals with descriptions of the Russian monastery of St. Panteleimon and the Serbian monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos in the monumental work ?Athonias? (1848-1865) by Athonite monk and historiographer Iakobos Neasketiotes. A comparison of the texts of the two most recent and complete manuscript copies of the work allows us not only to see the thematic expansion and the addition of the documents, but also to conceptually revise our insights into the history of Athonite monasteries. The six available Athos versions, including the Koutloumousiou codex gr. 516 and the non-catalogued codex Neasketiotes of 1842, both Greek autographs of Iakobos Neasketiotes, allow us to trace the expansion and deepening of Hilandarian themes in his fundamental historiographical work, ?Athonias?.

Byzantine memorial books the case of the book of the Protaton of Karyes (Mount Athos)

The article re-examines the memorial book of the Protaton of Karyes (Mount Athos) and minutely looks at its content (about 2000 names), articulation and structure. The original part of the book was written at the Athonite Protaton around 1366 and is followed by a series 14th-15th and 16th-century additions. The book, compiled in the third quarter of the 14th century, remained in use for nearly two centuries, with liturgical additions and constant updating of the records of the deceased. The book, a simple (albeit long) list of names, can be fruitfully compared with shorter lists transmitted by the donation deeds preserved in monastic archives and cited in typika.

Poseta kralja Petra I Karađorđevića Carigradu 1910. godine

The visit of King Petar I Karađorđević to the Turkish sultan is one of the eight visits in modern Serbian history. Seven meetings of Serbian rulers with sultans took place in Constantinople, except for one that took place in Bulgaria. In the visits made before 1878, the Serbian rulers went as vassals. The meeting between the Serbian king and Sultan Mehmed V Rešad in 1910 was the third in a row since Serbia became an independent state. King Petar I Karađorđević spent the second half of March and the first half of April 1910 travelling. First, he visited Russia, then Constantinople, Mount Athos, and finally Thessaloniki. The trip lasted a little over 24 days, six of which he spent in Constantinople. The Serbian delegation led by the king was warmly received by the sultan, the common people, and the Christian population living in the Turkish capital. Upon their return, the members of the delegation were convinced that Turkey would remain on the path of improving Serbian-Turkish relations, friendly agreement, and strengthening of economic relations. This intention was highlighted in the official statement of the Porte published on the occasion of the visit of the Serbian king. In the announcement, it was expressly emphasized that a complete agreement was reached at the conferences of the foreign ministers of the two countries and that the Turkish side will grant Serbian wishes for strengthening economic and trade relations. It was of great importance for the Kingdom of Serbia to remove the obstacles that existed until that time regarding the construction of the Adriatic railway. In addition, practical results were achieved because Turkish officials expressed their readiness for the greatest possible benefits that would contribute to the export of Serbian goods through Thessaloniki. The visit to Constantinople brought success in the issues regarding religion as well, because after four years of resistance, the Patriarchate and the Synod, just before the king's arrival, accepted the election of the Serb Varnava Rosić as bishop of the Veles-Debar eparchy. The meeting of the two rulers received great attention in the diplomatic circles of European countries, especially Austria-Hungary. The relations between Serbia and the Ottoman Empire, apart from the economic aspect, soon fell into the shadows due to the Albanian riots and rebellions that engulfed the entire Kosovo vilayet. In that case too, the Serbian state tried not to interfere in Turkey's internal affairs.

Nomokanones as a Forgotten Source for Liturgics: A Case Study of the Nomokanon Manuscript GR 14 (17th c.) of the Grabovac Serbian Orthodox Monastery (Hungary)

In this paper we present and analyze some selected liturgical rubrics from the Mount Athos and two titles of the two last chapters of the very important manuscript Nomokanon GR 14 (17th c.) of the Serbian Orthodox Monastery Grabovac (Hungary). These rubrics and also titles of the two last chapters, which we have found in already-mentioned manuscript, were being formed by translation from Greek into Church Slavonic language of the Serbian redaction. Selected liturgical rubrics were being translated from the relevant parts of Athonite Typicon and Canon Law Tradition, and two titles of the two last chapters of Nomocanon GR 14 from a work of Gabriel Seviros, Metropolitan of Philadelphia (c. 1540–1616). We have also explained the main theological motives for such a translation and redaction of these texts.

Russian saints and the struggle against Latinism in the 15th–16th centuries: Byzantium or the Baltic?

The schism between the Western and Eastern churches, which formally took place in Constantinople, gave rise to a rich polemical literary tradition, but anti-Latin theme entered relatively late into hagiography as a special literary genre. This did not happen in Byzantium until the 30s of the 13th century. There is not a single hagiography completely devoted to the denunciation of the Latins in the Greek circle of writing (in Byzantium, Cyprus and Crete, Palestine and Mount Athos) of the 13th–16th centuries. This topic is associated exclusively with biographical details and is mentioned episodically in the hagiographies. None of the monuments of late Greek-Byzantine hagiography with anti-Latin fragments entered the Old Russian literature. On the contrary, there is not only an increase in interest in this topic in ancient Russian literature, but there is even a life written purposefully as an anti-Latin pamphlet — the life of the holy martyr Isidore of Yuryev. The dynamics of the emergence of anti-Latin theme in Old Russian hagiography is asynchronous with Byzantine hagiography — it became relevant in Old Russia only in the second half of the 15th century. Almost all Russian saints whose lives contain anti-Latin themes are associated with the Baltic region. This is the legendary origin of the holy fools Isidor Tverdislov of Rostov and Procopius of Ustyug, the monks Anthony the Roman and Serapion of Pskov, the military-political activity of the prince Alexander Nevsky and the holy martyr Isidor’s of Yuryev death at the hands of the Latins. The article concludes that Byzantine hagiography did not play a role in the formation of anti-Latin theme in ancient Russian hagiography.

The Rule of the Singing of the Psalter and Its Influence on the Slavic Tradition of This Liturgical Book of the 13th–14th Centuries

The article provides a textual analysis of the Rule of the Singing of the Psalter according to all its parchment copies and traces its connection with the Slavic Psalter. As a result of the study, two redactions were identified and the second redaction was found to be derived from the first. Both redactions are associated with the spread of additional private services, which were actively introduced into Slavic worship on Mount Athos in the 13th century, as a result of which troparia and prayers after each cathisma appear in the Psalter. The first edition is possibly associated with the circle of St. Sava of Serbia: the translation exhibits Russian features and, most likely, comes from the Panteleimon Monastery, where the saint was tonsured. Among the Southern Slavs, only the second redaction is known, and it is found in a much greater number of manuscript copies. Both redactions became known in Rus' in the 13th century, which indicates the intensity of ties with Athos. The appendix to the article contains an index of all known prayers after cathismata in the 13th–14th-centuries Slavic sources.

The agreement between Saint Sava and the administration of Mount Athos on the land purchase of a vineyard (1228) the origin and fate of the Greek and Serbian texts

A comparative analysis of the Greek and Serbian versions of the text is used to establish the authenticity of the agreement between archbishop Sava and the representatives of the Mount Athos administration at the time of Protos Eusebius (August 1228), but also to identify layers from different periods, common for a document that has multiple copies. The paper seeks to determine the methods of creating the two versions and the precise relationship between the underlying manuscript traditions, as well as the diplomatic status of some versions, especially the two earlier Greek and the only Serbian version. By relying on a methodology that separates the textual and event-history levels in the document and by tracking the consistency and deviations in the surviving variants of the texts, it is demonstrated that the Greek text was created by Saint Sava by adapting an earlier agreement made under Protos Theoktistos (1215-1218/1219). It has also been concluded that the original version was most likely written by Sava?s collaborator, that the earliest Greek copy dates from the time of Saint Sava (as inferred by V. A. Mosin), that the Serbian Slavonic translation was made some time after Saint Sava?s death (ca. 1235/1236), that an intermediate copy was based on it (ca. 1498/1499) and that it served as the source for the only surviving manuscript copy, probably made by a Russian or a Serbian monk well versed in Russian chancery practices (the very beginning or the first decades of the 17th century). The Greek copies of the aforementioned agreement and its Serbian version reveal that Saint Sava purchased land intended for a vineyard for the Hermitage of Saint Sava in Karyes on two occasions, first as an archimandrite and then as an archbishop.

Nicholas Fennell, Russian Monks on Mount Athos. The Thousand Year History of St Panteleimon’s

Nicholas Fennell, Russian Monks on Mount Athos. The Thousand Year History of St Panteleimon’s